From February
20th to 22nd, the FPTP Coordinating Council (CC) met in San Antonio
for its semi-annual meeting . Seven CC members representing six Yearly
Meetings attended, and there was one observer from Peace Brigades International
(PBI).

We discussed
partnering with Peace Brigades International, Balkan Peace Teams and
Peaceworkers. Since becoming partners with these groups (a relationship
we already have with Christian Peacemaker Teams) involves sending FPTP
volunteers to their programs, we decided we needed more information
about the infrastructure to accept, orient and support volunteers to
the latter two organizations. We entered into partnership with Peace
Brigades International. A CC member is planning to represent FPTP at
PBI's upcoming National Gathering in late April.

We planned
to continue to recruit FPTP volunteers for work with Christian Peacemaker
Teams, and our liaison to CPT, Suzanne O'Hatnick, will attend their
Steering Committee in March. We have made strides toward meeting some
of the goals we set for ourselves in June, 1997. Mary Lord, Elise Boulding
and Rosa Packard have all offered programs on making Monthly Meetings
into peace resource centers. To facilitate contact within the CC, we
have begun meeting twice yearly. Our partnerships with CPT and PBI will
allow us to have our own project and volunteers, although we have not
managed to recruit any so far. We revised our plans for orientation
of new CC members and outreach to other Yearly Meetings. We recognized
that we were not yet ready to have a centralized list of people to respond
to crises, but that some Yearly Meeting representatives have begun to
make lists of names of their own YM members.

We plan
to launch the Elise Boulding Fund for Peace
Team Work within the next month, which will provide funding
to assist volunteers to our partner groups. $1,500 from FPTP general
funds will be designated as seed money for the Fund.

We have
projected raising $1,000 from individual donations, $3,500 from Monthly
Meetings, and $3,000 from Yearly Meetings in 1998. Our carry-over from
1997 was $5167. Our expenses are expected to run $6,195 for office-related
expenses, including administrative support; printing of Peace Teams
News and other materials; postage; supplies; telephone and e-mail;
and advertising. The CC travel fund which assists CC members to attend
meetings is $750. We expect to spend $3,000 in 1998 to assist FPTP volunteers
to CPT and PBI (in addition to the money we have designated for the
Boulding Fund.) We hope that support for FPTP will be added to the
budgets of the Yearly and Monthly Meetings that have united with our
Mission Statement, and ask that members of these meetings request this
support. A minute was adopted approving an exploration of sending
a delegation to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and/or Burundi for
the purpose of exploring a long-term peace team project with African
Friends and Africans of other denominations to adapt and disseminate
Friends-based peacemaking activities from Alternatives to Violence,
Children's Creative Response to Conflict, Help Increase the Peace, Listening
Projects, and other forms of nonviolence training. David Zarembka has
been assigned the task of developing this exploration. Communications
on this endeavor should be addressed to:

In the afternoon
before their departure, six CC members joined members of Friends Meeting
of San Antonio and several hundred other people at a prayer vigil and
march protesting the imminent bombing of Iraq.